Thursday, November 20, 2008

The CBLDF celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Neil Gaiman's landmarkcreation Sandman with an auction of incredible original art! Up for grabs are exciting pieces of Sandman memorabilia, includingindividual works from the 20th Anniversary Poster by Colleen Doran, MarkBuckingham, Richard Case, Jill Thompson and more! Also included are art jamsfeaturing Neil Gaiman and special guest artists like Mike Mignola, Paul Pope,Jeff Smith, Eduardo Risso, Darwyn Cooke, Amanda Conner, and many others! We arealso offering a special convention premium from 2004's Fiddler's Greenconvention, and a 1994 copy of The Comics Journal with Neil on the cover!To bid on these items, go here!

Ah, but for me, it's a lot more than that. First let's go to Neil's words that he recently wrote on Nov 6th on his blog while plugging an interview of mine.

"Larry and I were friends for years, stopped being friends during the McFarlane nonsense, when he was working for Todd and not making art, and then went back to being friends again when he stopped working to Todd and starteddoing comics again." \

As I'm sure many of you are well aware, those were some pretty odd, and often stressful, times for me during those years. Private conversations you had with a friend, years later become evidence in a court of law. And all of a sudden you are being cross examined (literally!) by an attorney who's job it is is to try get you tangled up in your memories about things you didn't know you were going to have to remember years later. Probably the most painful thing about my years at McFarlane was the barrier that this put in my friendship with Neil Gaiman.

Well, once I was no longer employed by Todd McFarlane, Neil and I were no longer required to be in an adversarial position grimacing at each other across a bloody playing field.

The first time I actually ran into Neil was at a CBLDF function in New York City. It was so great to be able to shake his hand and hug him hello and not have it be strained. The pic at the left is a documentation of that meeting.

Anyway, for that event Neil did a whole bunch of drawing that took up about half a page on a 5" x 7" stock (really nice paper as I recall). It was first come first served as far as who picked out which drawing. But I definitely remember Jeff Smith, Jim Valentino, Colleen Doran and Paul Pope scribbling like mad that night. (Hmmmm, probably Nikki Cook too).

And it can be yours! Yes, I know times are tough, and money is getting ever tighter, but the good work that CBLDF does is just as important as it ever has been--if not more. So, if you like me and Beanworld and if you love Neil and Sandman--this is a hell of an artifact to have in your home!

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Hey Larry, I won the sketch, yay!

But it got me thinking on a crossover... after all, Morpheus appeared in different shapes to different species... Martian Manhunter saw one of his old gods, a cat would see an indigo brooding nightmare, etc...

What would the beans see if Morpheus had visited them?

Perhaps this is something you and Neil could collaborate on for the CBLDF!

Congrats whoever you may be! Your donation goes to an excellent cause.

Good ideas. All those great characters are owned by DC Comics and I think Beanworld has to get a whollllllle lot more popular before the powers-that-be at DC and Dark Horse would begin think it was a project with a whole lot of commercial potential.

One character that Neil has an interest in however HAS already met Beanish and Dreamishness--Miracleman.

They teamed up in the Total Eclipse team-up series from Eclipse Comics 20 years ago.

In the past (like 15 years ago or more) Neil and I batted the idea around of extrapolating something interesting out of that meeting. I wanted to draw something where the characters looked like the pictographic representations of super heroes depicted on pg 21 of TOTB #11 and pg 113 of the tpb LMB 3. (It will also be in next summer's "A gift Comes!" hardcover.)